The Abbasids, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottomans; mashrabiya and Mamluk minbars; mosques, madrasas, sabil, kuttab, khanqah, wekalat, and many mausoleums. There is a ton to see in Islamic Cairo.
The density of monuments on a 5km north-south stretch from the Citadel to Bab Al-Fotuh is phenomenal. I spent three days walking that section, one day to visit the northern cemetery (and Baron Empain Palace in Heliopolis), and another day south and west (mostly Ibn Tulun Mosque and Rhoda Island). My biggest regret is not making time for the Islamic Art Museum, but there’s also the southern cemetery, and, well, I have whole list (of just Islamic Cairo) that would probably take another five days.
I stayed in Abdin, not far from the eponymous palace and the Mohamed Naguib Metro Station. The hotel had no heat and poor insulation, but two thick warm comfortable comforters kept me cozy at night. From my balcony I could see the dome and minarets of Mohammed Ali Mosque at the Citadel.
I had breakfast around the corner every morning from a smiling, welcoming group of young guys.
The first leg of our journey from Luxor to Cairo was a cruise on the Nile. Ours was two days and two nights from Luxor to Aswan via Edfu and Kom Ombo. At least three friends had taken similar cruises, and all raved about it. I won’t rave about it. If you’re on the fence about a Nile cruise, skip it.
The highlight is sitting on the top of the boat lazily watching verdant river banks. You realize that Egypt is the Nile. Beyond the strip of irrigated agriculture along the river, it’s all desert.
Ancient Egypt, finally! Why’d it take three trips to Egypt to make it to Luxor? And why stay only four days? You can probably see Luxor’s highlights in about eight days (six on the west bank, two on the east side?). Four days gave us a little taste of Egyptology.
Before coming to Luxor, visiting Upper Egypt seemed rather confusing — where to stay, how to get around, how spread out is everything, how do the tickets work. And then there are touts and scams and outright lying. The difficulties start with simply getting from the touristy Red Sea to touristy Luxor, something I’d expect to be easy.
In the end I guess it was easy — we didn’t leave our hotel at Utopia Beach Club until after 11am and arrived in Luxor the same day. The hardest part was convincing the tour desk at the hotel to call a cab for us. Arrange this ahead of time if you can. The taxi dropped us at the minibus station in Al-Qusair where we caught a Hurghada-bound shared taxi station wagon to Safaga and from there a gobus to Luxor. The road heading west from Al-Qusair straight to the Nile does not appear to have many transportation options. This might be why people repeatedly warned there were no buses to Luxor and we’d need to pay for a private transfer. This wasn’t the only time in Egypt that long distance transportation was easier and cheaper than we’d been told.
Touts in Luxor are notorious, but the scams and hassles seem to be confined to small areas where there are lots of tourists. As in Sri Lanka and Turkey and Syria (and many other places), visiting museums and archaeology sites can be surprisingly expensive for foreigners. Over 10% of our total trip cost (which included flights and a week at an all inclusive resort on the Red Sea) was spent on entrance fees (and we didn’t even visit the two most expensive tombs: Nefertari was closed, and we didn’t have time for Seti I). Ignoring the prices (close your eyes and pay) seems like a good strategy.
We stayed on the west bank and rented bicycles from Mahmoud for our three days of touring on the west bank. It’s easy to get around by bicycle though we were a bit surprised how long it took to get to Valley of the Kings, our first excursion. It’s slightly uphill most of the way which we didn’t notice till the end of the day when we coasted much of the way back to town.
More Red Sea snorkeling, this time to Utopia Beach Club, about 30km SSE of Al-Qusair, Red Sea Governorate, Egypt. Philipp (who we snorkeled with one day at Makadi Bay) had been to Utopia Beach Club before and assured us it was worth going back. He’s right.
As at Makadi Bay there’s good hard coral but very little soft coral.
Ferda and I have four olive trees on a small piece of land in Geyikbayırı. Some years we don’t make it up there at all and let the neighbors harvest the olives. Some years we get a group of friends, and everyone takes some olives home to cure for eating. This year we decided to see if we could get some oil. The day was a surprising success.
We rented a car, drove up to Geyikbayırı, and borrowed some equipment from a neighbor. The important things here were a ladder, a fairly large tarp, and a small rake-like tool that you can pull through the branches and pull off olives. I doubt it was much before 10am by the time we started picking olives. Ferda and I were at it all day until after sunset. Yeliz came up in the morning and brought us breakfast. Seda showed up in the afternoon with the kids. They weren’t much help at all and got bored fairly quickly, but Seda certainly helped picking olives.
From this effort we ended up with 112kg of olives. There were still lots of olives on the tress, but we were out of time. Also, the olives that were left were mostly the difficult to reach ones. It would be good to hire an expert one year and see how they manage to clean the olives off the trees so well. We know they do ’cause we told the neighbors to collect the rest of our olives and give us a share for eating. Our share ended up being 10kg. When we went up to get those olives, we saw that there were hardly any olives left on our trees. How did they do that?
When you mill olives, you want to do it the same day that you pick them. We packed the car, returned everything to the neighbor, and had a longer drive than expected to the mill in Döşemealtı. I have visited one of these mills near the Aegean where it seems like every third village has an olive mill. That’s certainly not the case in Antalya where there are fewer olive trees (many more oranges and pomegranate here). We had called the mill to be sure they’d be open, and they said that they’re near the entrance to Döşemealtı. Well, that turned out to be on the far side from Antalya. It was certainly dark by the time we arrived, but we managed to find the place, Döşemealtı Zeytinyağı Fabrikası.
There we learned that we had 112kg of olives and that the minimum they mill is 200kg. Ferda asked around and found two guys who let us join them. The place was crowded, and we had to wait perhaps two hours before our turn came. At the last minute an older couple showed up with only 36kg, and they joined us as well. It was nice that all the olives in our pool (of 405kg) from four places looked the same.
Finally the excitement starts. Dumping the olives into the first large sink thing:
